Sixty One Names in june and Counting In IRAQ

CoastalPost Article — July 2005

My July 2005 Coastal Post article covers the recent June 2005 casualties in Iraq, the exchange between Rumsfeld and Kennedy of June 23rd, and evidence pointing to strange events surrounding the Wellstone plane crash of Oct 2003.

Researching this article was a heartbreak and a half. To arrive at this simple listing of sixty-one names, I visited a most excellent website compiled by CNN (of all the media!) This site listed not only American dead, but all the dead - the Brits and Eastern Europeans along with our fellow citizens who have died since March 2003.

Most chilling were the descriptions of the deaths.

Are you aware that it is so friggin’ hot there in Iraq? Often temperatures exceed 120 degrees. It is so hot that as your brain begins to boil - just as your Humvee caravan goes over the bridge - your survival instinct overcomes whatever common sense you once had, and you jump out of the Humvee and rush into the waters of the river - only (since you are covered head to toe in heavy gear) to find yourself a drowning victim? If what CNN is reporting is the truth, then this seems to be a common way to die in Iraq.

The older reservists seem to die from heart attacks brought on by the high heat and "normal" day to day expectations. Forty-four year olds and high temps and twelve mile hikes in the desert don’t add up to a surviving combination.

Will somebody please get us out of there?

SIXTY ONE MORE NAMES AND STILL IT GOES ON

by Carol Sterritt The Coastal Post, July 2005

Phillip C Edmundson, 22, Army Specialist, June 01, ’05; Louis E Niedermeier, Army, Private First Class, June 01 ’05; Virgil R Case, Army National Guard Staff, June 01, ’05; Linda J Villar, 41, Dept of the Army Civilian, June 3, ’05; Antonia Mendoza, 21, Marine Corporal, June 03, ’05; Brian M Romines, 20, Army National Guard Specialist, June 06 ’05; Eric J Poelman, 21, Army Specialist June 05, ’05; Brian Scott (No Other Information); Justin L Vasquez, 26, Army Staff Sergeant, June 05, 2005; Theodore S Westhusing, 44, Army Colonel, June 05, ’05; Carrie L French, 19, Army National Guard Specialist, June 05 ’05; Robert T Mininger, 21, Marine Lance Corporal, June 06, 05; Jonathan L Smith, 22 Marine Lance Corporal, June 06, 05; Eric T Burri, 21, Army, June 07, 2005; Terrence K Crowe, 44, Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel, June 07, ’05; Roberto Arizola, Jr, 31, Army Sergeant, June 08, ’05; Michael J Fasnacht, 25, Army 1st Lieutenant, June 08, 2005; Dougl! as E Kashmier, 27, Army Private First Class, June 08, ’05; Louis E Allen, 34, Army National Guiard 1st Lieutenant, June 08, ’05; Phillip T Esposito, 30, Army National Guard, Captain, June 08, ’05; Marc Lucas Tucker, Marine Lance Corporal; Mark O Edwards, 40, Army National Guard Staff Sergeant; David Joseph Murray, Army National Guard Sergeant, June 9, ’05; Daniel Chavez, 20, Marine Lance Corporal, June 09 ’05; Dustin V Birch, Marine Reserve Lance Corporal, June 9 ’05; Thomas O Keeling, Marine Reserve Lance Corporal, June 9, ’05; Devon Paul Seymour, 21, Marine Reserve Lance Corporal, June 9, ‘’05; Brad D Squires, 26, Marine Reserve Corporal, June 09, ’05;

The names reflect our own lives. We all know a Phillip or a Marc; we all know a Carrie or a Dave. Someone reading this list may actually know someone on it. For now, it serves as the “Coastal Post” version of “The Wall.” You don’t need to go to Washington, D.C.; I am bringing the war on home to you. Choose a name. If it is in your belief system, offer up a big prayer for the families and the friends of that soldier. Lord and Goddess know all too well that those people need some help about now.

However, there are names that are very involved with Iraq that will never be on the list. I don’t have to detail those names for you, you know them as well as I do.

No one named Jenna or Barbara Bush are ever to be found here. And as fond of war games as they are, it is unlikely that Rumsfeld and Cheney will make this list. (Although last autumn, the plane that Rummie was on was indeed shot at while inside an Iraqi flight takeoff zone.)

There are other names I can’t bring to you. Six hundred human beings, we are told, have been incarcerated in Guantanamo. It’s hard to say, though, isn’t it? After all, if we don’t have a list of names, how can we tell? There are reports that people held in Guantanamo have been transferred to other countries and tortured there. Did they make it back to the safety of their Gitmo cell? And if they did, did they end up as one of the Gitmo suicides?

Those imprisoned at Gitmo are nameless. Many people connected with and concerned about the Gitmo operation have stated that at least one third of these captives are innocent of anything other than being swept up in raids inside Afghanistan.

Looking into Guantanamo, we have to ask ourselves: How much easier it is to replace a nameless body count with innumerable bodies...

And still the war goes on. Would we even have this war now if it weren’t for earlier casualties? If let’s say, Senator Wellstone of Minnesota had been around to oppose it, oh, but wait a minute, he was taken out by “unruly weather” in October of 2002. I bet that “unruly weather” has a name to it, don’t you? Some lowly operative was told to “dispatch” a “target” and only three mild pieces of proof remain as to the insidious nature of the crash that took eight people’s lives.

One piece of proof is the spoken words of a local Eveleth Minnesota news reporter that the weather DID NOT cause Wellstone’s accident. (She would know - she was in the vicinity when it happened. A light drizzle and temperatures in the thirties and forties are nothing for an early winter day in the Northern Woods of Minnesota. ) The second piece of evidence relates to a driver along the roadway near the woods where Wellstone’s plane went down. His cell phone had a mysterious failure at about the same moment that the cockpit was no longer making contact with the Everett airport control tower. In this day of Electro- Magnetic Pulse Technology, you no longer need a bazooka to take down a plane or helicopter.

The third piece of evidence relates to the fact that this plane caught fire either directly before or directly after impact, and burned from 11Am to close to 5:30 Pm the day of the accident. For a small plane to burn that long is unheard of. Only an extraordinary cargo could cause such a fire.

Scheduled to be on that plane, was one Senator Edward M Kennedy. So although the flight that he did not take was a bit under three years ago, I would not be surprised if his close miss with Destiny somehow influenced his making the following remarks in an exchange with Rumsfeld. These statements were made at the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Iraq, on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005.

KENNEDY: "Secretary Rumsfeld, as you know, we are in serious trouble in Iraq and this war has been consistently and grossly mismanaged. And we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire. Our troops are dying and there really is no end in sight." (The next paragraph ignored for purpose of brevity.)

"You were wrong on September, 2002, when you told the House Armed Services Committee

that, knowing what we know about Iraq ’s history, no conclusion is possible except that they are escalating their WMD programs.

"And you were wrong when you told this committee that no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq .

"When General Shinseki estimated that we’d need several hundred thousand soldiers, you scoffed and said the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces is far from the mark.

And when the massive looting occurred after Baghdad fell, because we didn’t have enough troops for security, you callously said: "Stuff happens."

"You wrongly insisted after Saddam fell that there was no guerrilla war, even though our soldiers continue to be killed. In June, 2003, you said, "The reason I don’t use the phrase ’guerrilla’ war is because there isn’t one."

"You wrongly called the insurgents dead-enders — but they are killing Americans, almost three a day, and Iraqis with alarming frequency and intensity.

"You wrongly sent our service members into battle without the proper armor. When asked by a soldier about inadequate equipment, you said you go to war with the army you have. They’re not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

"You exaggerated our success in training capable Iraqi security forces. February, 2004, you told this committee, "We have accelerated the training of Iraqi security forces — now more than 200,000.""

RUMSFELD: “That’s in February of this year.”

KENNEDY: “In fact, we have far fewer actually able or capable of fighting then and far fewer that are capable even now. So you basically have mismanaged the war and created an impossible situation for military recruiters and put our forces and our national security in danger.

"Our troops deserve better, Mr. Secretary. I think the American people deserve better. They deserve competency and they deserve the facts. In baseball, it’s three strikes, you’re out. What is it for the secretary of defense?"

Then comes Rumsfeld’s denials. RUMSFELD: "Well, that is quite a statement." (He says this using a special voice. It is that hyper-amused condescending voice tone favored by those whose station in life allows them to control society. When you control society, and everyone who comes across your path, you do not ever need to get angry. Or to say you are sorry. The Society Controllers employ this voice when a sub-ordinate speaks out of turn.)

RUMSFELD: "First, let me say that there isn’t a person at this table who agrees with you that we’re in a quagmire and that there’s no end in sight. The presentations today have been very clear, they’ve been very forthright."

What Rumsfeld neglects to say is that these presentations are a pack of lies. And after his denials, comes the following interchange: KENNEDY: Well, my time has just expired.

But, Mr. Secretary, I’m talking about the misjudgments and the mistakes that have made — the series of events which I mentioned — the disarming of the Iraqi army. Those were judgments that were made and there have been a series of gross errors and mistakes. Those were on your watch.” KENNEDY repeats this last phrase, “Those are on your watch.”

“Isn’t it time for you to resign?”

RUMSFELD: Senator, I’ve offered my resignation to the president twice, and he’s decided that he would prefer that he not accept it, and that’s his call.

KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman...

Meanwhile, a small bipartisan group in Congress has proposed a resolution calling on President George W Bush to start bringing home US troops from Iraq by 1 October 2006. But Mr Rumsfeld said that timing in war was not predictable and there were no guarantees.

"And any who say that we’ve lost this war, or that we’re losing this war are wrong. We are not," he said.

However, the continuing violence had led some US commanders to scale back any optimistic predictions about US troop numbers being reduced any time soon, says the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Jonathan Marcus.

And while Iraq’s new security forces are growing in number, their effectiveness remains very much in doubt. At least one military expert has put it in another way. He claims that the US is losing a battallion of troops every month to deaths and injuries. With the size of our Army, how can anyone say we are not losing?

And how long will it be before those in charge, that is, the Bush Administration, is forced out, or else someone in the Administratin comes to their senses, admits a spade is a spade and brings the troops home?

With even the Republicans in Congress starting to complain about the inept policies that Rumsfeld et al have created, the day of reckoning might be at hand.